melaleuca would soak up far more water than
other plants. The problem is, the trees adapted
to Florida all too well, rapidly muscling out
native species.
"See all those trees," says Jay, pointing
down to a willowy canopy that spreads out for
miles. "That's all melaleuca."
We land and Jay jumps out-a machete in
one hand, a bottle of purple-tinted herbicide in
the other. He hacks down a few melaleuca
seedlings, then sprays the stumps to kill them.
"It's the ideal weed," says Jay, hoisting a
five-foot-tall specimen. It can germinate on
land or in water; it produces massive quanti
ties of seeds; it spreads fast, invading 50
acres a day throughout Florida; and, perhaps
most important of all, it has no natural
enemies here.
Not yet, anyway. Government entomolo
gists have imported melaleuca-eating bugs
from Australia and are studying them, under
strict quarantine, to find the perfect preda
tor-one that will attack the melaleuca but
nothing else. This search for a biological con
trol may take years, so Jay and his crews keep
* Mouth-to-mouth at mealtime, egrets feed
their chicks small wads of chewed-up fish.
Human alteration of the park's natural
water cycle has made it difficult for adult
birds to find fish, and many chicks perish
(opposite).
busy hacking, chainsawing, and spraying.
"We're going to be continually re-infested
from adjacent areas unless our neighbors treat
their melaleuca," says Doug DeVries, super
visor of the park's exotic control program.
"But eventually we need biocontrol to suc
ceed. We're just keeping the park alive until a
cure is found."
HE PATIENT took a heavy hit in August
1992, when Hurricane Andrew raged
across South Florida, cutting across the
middle third of the park. Biologists worry
that exotic trees will invade heavily dam
aged areas- the mangrove estuaries that were
flattened on the western side of the park and
the tree islands torn up in the park's interior.
One morning I stroll along the trail that runs
through Paradise Key. Usually a dark, jungle
like thicket, this hammock now looks as
though someone came through with a roto
tiller. Uprooted trees, broken limbs, and rot
ting leaves litter the ground. Many trees are
still standing, although some seem awfully
naked; I see one royal palm that had its fronds
stripped away by
the storm, leaving
behind a trunk that
looks like a white
washed
telephone
pole. In fact, most
of the canopy, which
used to keep the ham
mock
comfortably
cool, has been blown
away, opening up the
view and raising the
temperature to well
above normal.
Even Florida Bay,
which stretches from
the southern tip of
the mainland across
to the Florida Keys,
shows signs of sick
ness too. Once spar
kling, the bay has recently turned a dull, sick
shade of green.
"We've deprived the bay of freshwater
from the mainland, and the resulting hyper
salinity has been stressful to most organisms
out there," says marine ecologist Mike Rob
blee. Salinity levels in the bay have climbed to
70 parts per thousand-more than twice the
normal level--contributing to a massive sea
National Geographic,April 1994